It's 1970's in NYC
& the Rock & Roll Scene
Has Gone Mad!
The New York 70s rock scene that saw the rise of Lou Reed, the New York Dolls, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Television, the Ramones, and Blondie began as an intoxicating mix of drag-queen theater, British “glam rock,” and a hard-core rebellion against uninspiring contemporary radio.
At the time, Lisa Robinson (pictured here with the one and only Keith Richards) started writing for various rock magazine as she captured the amped-up, sequin-studded, punk-powered explosion she experienced at the Mercer Arts Center, Max’s Kansas City, and CBGB’s.
Iggy Pop
“Mass recognition isn’t important to me. What’s important is individual recognition. It’s not how many people recognize you, it’s what those who do recognize you recognize you for.” (Iggy Pop, 1971)
Patti Smith
“I was very concerned in the early 70s that rock ’n’ roll, which I thought was such an important arena and the true American art, was going to crash. My mother always told me that she thought the music of Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman would last forever, but it toppled. We had these deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and then we had glitter rock and it was sort of creepy—I looked at all that as a bad sign. I thought it was moving into the area of some big Broadway spectacular and the essence of rock ’n’ roll was being lost.” (Patti Smith, 1993)
Some say the 1970s New York rock scene started in the 1960s with the Velvet Underground. Others insist that it began around 1968 with the Stooges and MC5 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Or with Lou Reed’s reconfigured Velvet Underground at Max’s Kansas City in 1970. Or Patti Smith’s poetry reading with Lenny Kaye on guitar at St. Mark’s Church in February 1971. Or in London in 1970, when David Bowie began sewing those pre—Ziggy Stardust costumes.
“The truth is that the truth is not so simple. What really happened is that several things happened, all at once, all over the world. But nearly everyone would agree that early 1972, when the New York Dolls performed every Tuesday night at the Oscar Wilde Room of the Mercer Arts center in the Broadway Central Hotel, the 1970s the New York rock scene was officially born. I was there covering the music and the scene for Creem, Rock Scene, Hit Parade, a syndicated newspaper column, and the British music weekly New Musical Express. I kept my tape recorder with me at all times and managed to take enough notes to remember that every night was New Year's Eve with the New York Dolls.” (Lisa Robinson)
David Johansen, member of the NY Dolls
“The bands of the 70s are going to be fabulous. They're going to give us all the secrets of the universe.” (David Johansen, 1972)
“I Remember I was knocked out by the NY Dolls. My first impressions were that they were the early Stones in strippers' clothes. Fabulous early R&B sound, but much sloppier and more vital. It was the humor, the fun and drunk ”don't give a shit:" attitude of the band, that was intoxicating." (David Bowie 2002)
New York Dolls 1972
The New York Dolls — David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, Sylvain Sylvain, Billy Murcia and Arthur Kane Jr. — sit across from me at my apartment wearing platform wedgies, hotcha green-trimmed sunglasses, sequined hot pants, transparent chiffon blouses, pink denim overalls covered by a dragon-appliqued apron.
David Johansen: ‘When we formed our band we knew we had the best rock ’n' roll band. When the record companies came to see us, I think they got turned on. Their wives got drunk and started dancing and they got crazy. But then they thought about their kids…and that's what stopped them. They started thinking about their kids."
In 1972, lower Broadway was abandoned at night. The Mercer Arts Center was a place where people went to hang out, drink, pick people up…everyone really went to see the New York Dolls. Before they were the Ramones — whose singer Joey had an early glam rock band called Sniper — the Ramones went to see the Dolls. Patti Smith opened for the Dolls, reading poetry. Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine went to the Mercer Arts Center to see the Dolls before they formed their band the Neon Boys, the precursor to the band named Television.
In 1972 the NY Dolls were asked to leave the Mercer Arts Center because the theater didn't want any rock & roll there, but it lost so much money at the bar that it had to take the NY Dolls back.
Then one day in 1973 the Mercer Arts Center (and the entire Broadway Central Hotel) collapsed. For no apparent reason…the building simply fell down.
After the Mercer collapsed, Patti Smith performed a combination of poetry and cabaret songs at Reno Sweeney's on West 13th Street, backed by Lenny Kaye.
Soon after the duo would be joined by Richard Sohl on piano; later, guitarist Ivan Kral and drummer Jay Dee Daughterty would flesh out the Patti Smith Group.
RCA had just signed Bowie, Lou Reed and the Kinks. Bowie was with his manager, Tony DeFries — who was straight out of the sleazy school of the British music business — and Bowie's artfully butch, boisterous wife, Angela.
“I started to tell Bowie how he should meet the Warhol crowd, and then, as if on cue, in the door came Tony Zanetta, actress-poet-groupie Cherry Vanilla and Pork stage manager Leee Black Childers — all of whom, it appeared, had already signed up to be part of Tony DeFries's management company ”staff". I arranged a small dinner that night at the Ginger Man restaurant near Lincoln Center. Despite the stories that have grown around this ‘fateful’ meeting, it was relatively sedate…Lou Reed, none to gregarious, was with his then wife, Betty Kronstad. We called Danny Fields mid-meal to tell him to send Iggy up. We met Iggy later at Max's, and while no one remembers much about the evening, I do remember that Iggy was not stoned that night, as the fiction in the movie Velvet Goldmine and that Bowie instantly hit it off with Iggy.
The next day Iggy moved into the Warwick Hotel, where the Mainman camp was in residence. A few nights later, the Bowies, the Reeds and DeFries came to our apartment. One thing stood out in my memory of the evening: A rare copy of the East Village Other with an article on the Velvet Underground disappeared. Lou and David locked themselves in a small back room while Angela Bowie banged on the door, screeching for them to let her in." (Lisa Robinson)
This famous Mick Rock photo of David, Lou and Iggy was taken at an afternoon press conference at the Dorchester hotel; DeFries and Mainman were now handling all three stars.
Later that year, Bowie produced Lou Reed's Transformer and Lou ended getting his biggest hit — Walk On The Wild Side — and Bowie would go on to produce two of Iggy's best albums: The Idiot and Lust For Life.
“To create an art movement, you have to set up something up and then simply destroy it. The only thing to do is what the Dadaists, the Surrealists, did — act like amateurs who are as pretentious as hell. Cause as much bad, ill feeling as possible…you'll only create a movement when you have a rebellious cause.” (David Bowie 1976)
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